A billion dollar business by using a destructive natural phenomenon

Reddy and Jagadeesh think that they have a superior technique, refined by testing on several kinds of rocks and based on shock wave technology, to extract gas from deep under the earth.Hari Pulakkat | ET Bureau | April 07, 2016, 10:08 IST

The laboratory of KPJ Reddy and G Jagadeesh contains very expensive equipment, some of which were built at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru and the rest imported.

One of their most prized imports in recent times happens to be a 250-kg rock, obtained free in a jiffy from Kenya but brought into the country after considerable paperwork.

Reddy and Jagadeesh, professors of aerospace engineering at IISc, have spent a lot of time at the lab inside the IISc campus sending shock waves into the rock and studying the cracks that open up as a result.

Over the years, they have learned to make these cracks at will and with precision. While they try to open up fissures in the rock in their lab, the scientist duo may be opening up an extraordinary business opportunity for their startup company, Super Wave Technologies around the world.

At least one big industry would be deeply interested in the duo’s work, as its fortunes are tied to going deep underground and opening up precise channels underground.

The natural gas industry uses the term hydraulic fracturing - fracking for short - to describe this process, but fracking is far from controlled or benign.

The technique consists of pumping water and chemicals at high pressure into rocks about two kilometers deep, and the water flows into the rock randomly opening up fissures for the gas to flow out. It uses up too much water, causes at least mild earthquakes, and pollutes ground water.

Reddy and Jagadeesh think that they have a superior technique, refined by testing on several kinds of rocks, including the one from Kenya, and based on shock wave technology, to extract gas from deep under the earth.

They are now investigating the possibilities of shock wave technology for extracting gas, through an agreement signed with the state-run explorer Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) last year. Field trials will take time, as the procedure is complicated and expensive, but Reddy is confident. “Fracking is an uncontrolled process,” he says, “while shock waves can open up channels in a controlled manner.”

While they wait for the results of this experiment, the two scientists and their colleagues have figured out several uses for their technology, resulting in a startup company from IISc and several subsidiaries, each exploring a different business domain.

“Such work is rare in the country, let alone in the institute,” says Jayant Modak, deputy director of IISc. “It has opened up completely new avenues for commercialisation.”

Multiple Uses

Reddy and Jagadeesh have laboratory evidence that shock waves can be useful in transferring genes to a cell, in drying tea leaves quickly, artificially inseminating farm animals, delivering drugs without using needles, and for many other tasks.

They are exploring each of these business opportunity through a different subsidiary of Super Wave Technologies, now incubated by the IISc commercial arm Society for Innovation and Development (SID). “They have set up subsidiaries because each business is very different,” says CS Murali, chairman of the entrepreneurship cell at SID. The investment needed for them also differs significantly.

A shock wave is a small area of high pressure and temperature in a gas or liquid that travels at supersonic speeds. The thickness of the area of high pressure and temperature is small, as small as one-millionth of a meter, but it is enough to cause many physical effects when it hits something.

Shock waves are produced whenever energy is released in sudden bursts. In nature, they are produced during lightning, earthquakes, explosions and by supersonic aircraft. Crackers produce weak shock waves. Master whip crackers can produce shock waves at the tip of the whip.

Billion-Dollar Opportunity

Reddy and Jagadeesh have been researching shock waves for nearly three decades.

Their laboratory has been built over time with several hundreds of crores of rupees, funded mainly by customers like the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

While working on strategic projects, they found enough time to develop low-cost equipment to study shock waves. They formed the first products of the company.

Shock waves are important for engineering, but engineering students in the country are not exposed to the subject because a tube that can generate shock waves costs as much as Rs 60-70 lakh. Reddy made a small and inexpensive tube costing Rs 3 lakh and a larger tunnel costing Rs 6 lakh, called the Reddy Tube and Reddy Tunnel respectively.

Now Super Wave is selling these tubes to colleges, thereby exposing Indian students for the first time to this strategic science. “I believe,” says Super Wave project manager Chintoo Kumar, “that this is the only instrument in the world capable of producing shock waves consistently with just human force.”

Among the first sales that Kumar made was to his own alma mater, the College of Engineering in Thiruvananthapuram. He has sold a few to engineering colleges in Karnataka, Delhi and Tamil Nadu. Kumar thinks that every engineering college in the country is a potential customer, which translates to a potential cumulative business of at least Rs 100 crore.

Meanwhile, Super Wave is preparing to launch SuperBull, an artificial insemination product for the dairy industry. It will be followed by a technique to dry tea leaves quickly.

Artificial insemination is practised widely by the dairy industry, but Reddy believes he has a superior technique with higher success rates using shock waves.

Field trials are going on now, and the initial results are supposedly very good. Reddy believes that the product will be ready later this year. By next year, a Super Wave subsidiary could launch a method to dry tea leaves quickly.

For field trials, the company has teamed up with Parry Agro. The drying of tea leaves is a long process, often taking as much as 16-18 hours. When jolted with a shock wave, the tea leaves dry up supposedly in 10 hours.

It also enhances, according to Reddy, the polyphenol content of tea by about 30%. The next product, on which field trials are already going on, is to deliver drugs using shock waves and without needles.

A fourth product would be a method to reduce fungal infections in cotton seed. In between all these, the shale gas extraction method is also being investigated. It could take some time, but many in the institute believe – including Reddy – that Super Wave is a potential billion-dollar company. Judgment time is several years away.